The present invention relates to a recording material and its matting process.
There are a variety of technologies concerning processes for preparing recording materials. One of these concerns a process for matting the front or back surface of a recording material such as photographic photosensitive material and the like. This matting technology has been aimed at the prevention of electrostatic charging or mutual adhesion of, for example, photographic photosensitive materials, or otherwise, the improvement of vacuum adhesion properties.
Prior matting technologies are disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Kokai Publications JP-A-1-224076/1989 and JP-A-6-202339/1994.
However, the following problems have been encountered in the course of the investigations toward the present invention. Namely, the matting process disclosed in the Japanese Patent Kokai Publication JP-A-1-224076 essentially includes the step of matting a recording material by ink-jet printing, and thereby has the following problems.
Highly viscous liquid for matting of not less than several tens cP (liquid composition of a matting material dispersed in a dispersion medium) cannot be used in this process since this process employs ink-jet printing. The projection height of the resultant mats will become low since the liquid for matting has a low viscosity and its droplets adhered on the surface of a recording material continuously spread and make their diameter enlarged until they are dried. A concentration of solid contained in the liquid for matting cannot be increased satisfactorily in this process since this process requires a liquid of low viscosity for matting. Accordingly, it is difficult to obtain sufficient height of the resultant mats after drying.
On the other hand, the matting process disclosed in the Japanese Patent Kokai Publication JP-A-2-202339 essentially includes the step of making fine droplets of liquid for matting by using a spin atomizer, and thereby has the following problems.
It is difficult to obtain sufficient height of mats in this process similarly to the above case of ink-jet printing, since the viscosity of applicable liquid for matting is about 200 cP at most, although the liquid may have a higher viscosity than that usable in the above ink-jet printing process. Further, droplets produced from the liquid in spin atomizing have distribution in their sizes. Consequently, undesired sizes of mats are inevitably formed on a recording material. These undesired sizes of mats possibly cause deterioration of the recording material""s properties.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to solve the problems that the above described prior arts have, i.e., to provide a recording material having sufficient height and even size of mats formed thereon and a matting process capable of using sufficiently high viscous matting dispersion and thereby preparing these improved mats.
According to the present invention, the above object is attained by a recording material including screen-printed mats formed on the surface thereof and a matting process including the step of forming mats on a recording material by screen printing. Particularly, there are provided a recording material according to claim 1 and a matting process according to an independent claim 11.
Further aspects and features of the invention are set forth in the dependent claims which are incorporated herein by reference.
In a screen printing process, a highly viscous liquid for matting (termed as xe2x80x9cmatting liquidxe2x80x9d, too) which has a sufficiently high solid concentration can be used as a printing liquid. Thereby, highly projected mats can be formed on a recording material by applying a screen printing process. The screen printing process is a printing process employing a screen which may have a pattern, preferably, of evenly sized through-holes, and accordingly, dot-formed mats of the same size can be formed thereby.